Frownland

Nothing is nothing, not something. I mean it is a concept, a word, but it's not a tangible, capturable, or recordable. I pondered the concept of zero for five hours on acid once, it was quite an experience . The point of the piece is to point out how we'll never truly experience silence (an auditory nothing) because there will always be sound or music, depending on your position, so as long as we exist, silence won't.

Well, yes and no. It's a challenge to how you (the general you not you personally) perceive music, so it's bound to create discussion and Cage encouraged that. He would often stay after shows to discuss them with his audience. But I don't think that's the only thing Cage was doing with this piece. Look at interviews with him, the mother****er is STOKED about silence and sounds in almost a childlike fashion.

And it's awesome.

Whoooo! You finally got it, man, that's the whole idea of the piece.

You're next, Chula.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Chula Vista

Don't you mean "You finally agree with me?"

Dude, I'm 54 years old and not as pliable as most around here. My mind is made up. 4'33 is performance art. It is definitely not music. If you think otherwise, cool!

(P.S. The sound of waves breaking on the beach is most surely a form of nature's music though.)

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

DeadChannel

I'm still on the fence about 4'33, so I guess I'll watch how this continues to unfold.

Rexx Shredd

Not that I want to add to this profound rhetorical ambiguous discussion but I think the difference between what is music and what is not should be intent:

Shouldn't "music" be classified as man-made to differentiate itself? This means that a even if a person goes around with his digital audio-sampler of choice and samples found sounds, then throws them together and - although it may sound like cocaophony - it was purposefully put together, therefore music........conversely, I could walk through the woods and hear the coincidental sounds of several unrelated things that may form a "musical" melody based on the Western twelve-step form of music and - although "musical" to my ears because I am used to the Western paradigm of what constitutes it - it is still a natural anomaly with no purposeful intent and, therefore, not music

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OK :)

URBAN SHOKKER -- Old School P-Funk Style FUNK -- out NOW on Carbon 12 Records

Chula Vista

There's the rub. If 4'33 were the musicians on stage not playing, but sniffling, moving about, murmuring, snorting, farting, clanging things against music stands, etc., then it's music.

But to sit there in complete silence and completely rely on the audience and the surrounding ambient noise to provide "the music"; that's where 4'33 turns into performance art.

__________________

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

Machine

Well I don't know about that because the sounds of nature and whatnot would be disregarded as nothing as opposed to the same thing but recorded, I would say it's music either was as the process of recording wouldn't change the way the sound waves are or the way they sound.

(Oh and can I have a bit if input here, 4'33" is not something that I'm going to be listening to a lot like other silent compositions, I don't have to like it at all, but the thing is I accept and appriciciate it for the musical qualities it has. The same thing with art my friend really hates contemporary art because he says it looks like nothing, my response is always well it might not look like great artists of the past, but that's okay, and I don't have to like that kind of art to be able to appriciciate it and see it as what it is, art.)

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boost my ego

listen to me stroke my delay pedal

ever wanted to hear death grips songs... but they're acoustic? me neither.

Rexx Shredd

I curse Marcel Duchamp daily for putting a urinal on a pedastel and changing the opinions of "What is art?" forever but I digress --

OK, with that in mind, if I take a musical staff, and write in two 8th rests, four sixteenth rests, two 8th rests, and four more sixteenth rests, I have just wrote a bar of music, didn't I? If I repeat that over and over, its still sheet music....The silence is forced (thats the music part)....trying to force the natural ambience in 4'33 into the void is still purposeful, and therefore music.......... I guess it would be like carrying an empty picture frame around and holding it up anywhere: The artist can make an argument that he's purposely framing something behind him and calling it "art" ....when he takes it away, you can still see whatever it was now without the frame around it, because there is no intent now, its just background (Id be really surprised if an artist hasn't done this)

Gawd, I really do dislike these kind of artsy-fartsy idioms.........Thank you again, Marcel Duchamp <sarcasm intended>

__________________
OK :)

URBAN SHOKKER -- Old School P-Funk Style FUNK -- out NOW on Carbon 12 Records

Frownland

Duchamp 4 lyfe

__________________

Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Wolfi65

Easy: Shakira is music, Barbra Streisand is not.

Zhanteimi

We watched Funny Girl last night.